GENE MORRISON WAS an expert – an expert in convincing the unwary that he could provide them with reliable professional evidence for use in court. He claimed expertise in psychology, fire investigation, fingerprints and other specialisms. He had credible qualifications in none of them, making his living with the aid of purchased degrees, gullible contacts and creative use of the internet. In the meantime, the legal aid budget, and doubtless the pockets of some individual clients, became many pounds the lighter.
In February Morrison was convicted of fraud and sentenced to five years. But what of those who were taken in – clients who relied on him to help their case and solicitors who might have been expected to rely on more than word of mouth, anecdote, smooth talk and, doubtless, misleading advertisements? Should they all have been taken in?
Most solicitors need professional witnesses at some time. Many use them extensively; they bring expertise that the courts lack. But there is the problem: how, lacking that expertise, can the court judge who is an expert and who is right for a case?
Expert evidence is rarely out of the news. In the light of recent highprofile cases, including that of Morrison, there is a strong case for careful risk management when engaging professional witnesses. Traditionally, solicitors have looked to their network for advice on the good experts. Word of mouth is always valuable when seeking professional services, but is it enough in itself? Let me explain how the rapidly expanding Register of Forensic Practitioners will help you in your choice of expert witness.
Around 15-20 years ago, cases such as the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four caused serious reflection in the forensic community. The decision emerged to create a single register of currently competent practitioners, committed to high standards of conduct against which they could be judged if something went seriously wrong.
CRFP – the Council
for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners – was set up with Government support to give effect to that decision. Our central objective is to promote public confidence in forensic practice in the UK. We will achieve this by:
- Publishing a register of competent forensic practitioners.
- Ensuring, through periodic revalidation, that forensic practitioners keep up to date and maintain competence.
- Dealing with registered practitioners who fail to meet the necessary standards.
Our board consists predominantly of users of forensic practice. It includes a resident judge, a chief constable, the Deputy Crown Agent, a QC representing the Bar Council and one from the Law Society – currently Jennifer Leeming, a Manchester coroner.
The detail is on our website at www.crfp. org.uk. Our code, Good Practice for Forensic Practitioners, is widely accepted, and in our disciplinary procedures – designed to deal with allegations of poor practice – we aim to reflect modern thinking in professional regulation.
Registration is voluntary and lawyers, of course, remain free to engage the experts they choose. In any case, the register is at present open only to the mainstream forensic specialisms listed on the facing page. But if we get it right the register will be seen as a definitive indicator of an individual’s current competence in forensic practice.
We assess the competence of each individual who applies to be registered – there are no ‘grandparent’ rights or automatic guarantees of registration and we do not rely on reputation, qualifications or the length of time someone has been practising. An assessor from the same specialism scrutinises recent casework in detail. Assessment is a thorough process and no one – however eminent – gets through on the nod.
That is where CRFP goes beyond what organisations like the Expert Witness Institute and Academy of Experts can achieve. They are essentially membership organisations, promoting their members’ interests and providing a focus for discussion among the expert witness community. Commercial directories and catalogues of expert witnesses offer information about practitioners, but no credible means of assuring current competence. CRFP’s focus, by contrast, is on the public interest. We offer formal accreditation as a quality assurance measure, enabling those who use forensic services to manage the considerable risks that presenting professional evidence can carry.
So far we have focused mainly on the courts where the police are involved. The police and the main employers have actively encouraged forensic employees to become registered. To date we have granted some 2,700 registrations with about another 550 in the pipeline. At present registration is available for the following specialisms:
- Forensic science (drugs, firearms, human contact traces, particulates, marks, questioned documents, incident reconstruction, toxicology and the scientific evaluation of evidence from computers, telephones and images).
- Scene examination (mainly police SOCOs).
- Fingerprint examination.
- Fingerprint development (enhancement of marks for analysis).
- Collision investigation.
- Vehicle examination.
- Paediatrics.
- Forensic medical examination (the traditional ‘police surgeon’).
- Fire scene examination.
- Veterinary science.
- Odontology (identifications and bitemarks).
- Anthropology (including osteology and facial reconstruction).
- Archaeology.
- Podiatry.
- Data capture and examination from computers and telephones.
- Image origination, capture and examination. All these are described more fully in the register, which is on the CRFP website. Checking someone’s registration is free and takes a few seconds and a few clicks of a mouse.
The register will open to forensic nurses, paramedics and radiographers soon, and we are in discussion with a range of other groups, including natural scientists (geologists, entomologists, plant scientists, and meteorologists), environmental management experts, vehicle crime examiners and specialists in audio and phonetics. Ultimately, we expect the register will grow to 6-7,000 names. We have further work to do in specialisms such as forensic psychology and accounting, where we are talking to the key professional bodies.
So there is some way to go. It is an ambitious project, but one that is commended by the Lord Chancellor, Senior Law Lord, DPP and successive Lords Chief Justice and Masters of the Rolls.
In the Criminal Courts Review Lord Justice Auld said: “[One body] could set, or oversee the setting of, standards, maintain a register of accredited forensic scientists in all disciplines and regulate their compliance with those standards… The Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners, although only recently established, looks a strong candidate for such a role.”
The time has come when it would be worth your asking, when engaging or challenging a forensic practitioner in one of the above specialisms, whether they are registered with CRFP and, if not, why not?
No register can ever guarantee perfect practice at all times, but the Register of Forensic Practitioners offers a significant step in the direction of genuinely independent accreditation.